Origins of a Genius
by Uman Slave
Summary: Washu searches for the origins of a song that haunts her memory
1. Prelude

Ch.1: Prelude

"Huh?!"

            Washu sat up with a groan and felt the impressions of the keyboard for her main computer on her face. She scowled at the mini-alarm that was beeping on a monitor across the room, and quickly saw to it that it was turned off, in a way that Ryoko might agree with. 

            Standing up after the explosion, she scurried over to the smoking mass to see what exactly it was that she had destroyed. "Goddess damn it!" she cursed liberally, "That was the information unit for the masu tests!" she tugged her pink hair and stomped her feet, and was about to destroy something else when a face materialized over her glass of water.  
  


"Do you really want me to grant that wish?" Smirked Tsunami, "Because I will comply…"

            Washu glared at Tsunami. "Well, that's some way to greet a goddess!" Tsunami said, "And to think, I only stopped here because you invoked my name… Besides, this should be a lesson to teach you that it isn't healthy to work all night in the laboratory." 

            "Hmmph" Washu crossed her arms and tapped her foot at the goddess. "I thought I had fixed the 'ethereal being' shield over this place."

            Tsunami laughed a chiming laugh. "Oh, that thing? That might work for lesser gods, angels and…." She looked at the door where Ryoko was (for some reason) trying to get into the laboratory "… reputed demons, but stop the goddess of good?"

            "WASHU, GET YOUR LITTLE MIDGET ASS OUT HERE RIGHT NOW BEFORE I DESTROY YOU!" Roared Ryoko, her face turning a charming shade of scarlet.

            "Hmm, looks like I should take leave of you, your daughter seems to want to pick a fight with her mother… unruly teenagers, what's to be done?" Tsunami winked and then dissipated, leaving Washu to face a VERY livid Ryoko… alone.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

After tidying up her mess from this morning, Washu glanced at the door where Ryoko still banged incessantly, yelled, shouted and cussed. She weighed her options, on whether to leave Ryoko there, and hope that she doesn't turn destructive on something (or someone) else in the house, or go and confront her daughter and hope that Ryoko didn't turn TOO destructive on HER.

"This is defiantly turning out to be a bad day; I wonder what I did to deserve it…" Washu sighed and then glared at the glass of water, daring Tsunami to come back and make a witty, unneeded remark. Washu sighed again and trudged over to the lab door, flicking on what looked like a light switch by it, and once again sent up a quick prayer of thanks that she remembered to build the 'complete shield' over her lab. Mihoshi was incentive enough to do that, but as for remembering to turn it on….

"All right Ryoko!" she yelled cheerily as she yanked opened the door, causing the Dreaded Space Pirate to fall on her face in surprise, "No need to disturb the whole house! What is it you want with your dear mom?" Ryoko jumped up with a growl and stooped to put her scowling face right in Washu's smiling one. 

"First off, don't call yourself my mom," she snarled, "You're no mother to me!"

_Ouch, thought Washu, __that one smarts._

"Secondly, WHY THE HELL DID TENCHI SPEND ALL DAY IN THE LAB WITH YOU YESTERDAY?!" Ryoko clenched her fists and drew her arm back for a massive punch, when Tenchi scampered down the stairs.

"Ryoko!" He yelled, "What are you doing to Washu?"

_Uh oh, wrong thing to say, silver-tongue._

Ryoko's eyes flamed with an unholy light. "I…. KNEW… IT!" She bellowed and her energy sword flashed in her clenched palm. "YOU LIKE HER MORE THAN YOU LIKE ME, DON'T YOU!? WELL, I KNOW HOW TO FIX THAT!"

_This is fixing to get bad, Washu thought, and discreetly summoned her own energy sword_

Ryoko turned on Washu with a roar, and speared her sword down at Washu's heart with a deadly accuracy. Time slowed as her sword inched closer and closer to Washu's chest. Tenchi opened his mouth in shock and ran down the hallway, his arm outstretched to stop Ryoko. Ryoko's eyes narrowed and she smiled evilly as her feline sense tuned in to the kill. Washu reflexively brought her own sword up at the last minute and deflected the attack and used Ryoko's minute of off-balance to shove her away, while she scampered into her lab and slammed the door shut.

Washu leaned against the door, panting from the after-shock of almost getting killed, the adrenaline still running rampant through her veins. "Well, as if that isn't a way to wake yourself up." She could hear Ryoko's scream of rage through the door, and momentarily pitied Tenchi, but then stopped when she realized that it was his inept diplomacy that had gotten her that way in the first place.

Washu pushed herself up from against the door and padded over to her cushion. She sat down and floated over to a computer and made a log of the day's events so far. "This worries me," She mused to herself. "Ryoko has been getting steadily more violent recently, and if I hadn't been able to parry her thrust…" She shuddered, remembering the look of pure bloodlust in her daughter's eyes. 

_But why?__ This is against her nature. She only acted like this when she was controlled by Kagato... and she tried all she could to escape it.  Could it be that she's having unconscious relapses? Oh, my Ryoko, what is wrong? My poor baby…_

**_Sleep my baby …_**

Washu sat up with a snap when she heard that snippet of a tune. "That song! The song from my dreams! The one I was hearing when this whole accursed day started!" She looked wildly around the room for the woman who's throaty voice was singing, but only saw the darkness of her lab and the silently flashing lights of hundreds of monitors, waiting to be attended to.

Washu groaned and heard Ryoko screaming some string of obscenities at Ayeka. "The day is only going to go downhill, isn't it?" she asked to no one in particular.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

After two minor explosions and one major one, caused when Mihoshi came in the lab to tell Washu that it was lunch time, (how she was able to cause a TV remote to leave a table-sized hole in her lab floor in less than a minute, Washu was never able to figure out… even after watching the surveillance tapes of the whole destructive episode) Washu decided that it was a good time to go and eat the lunch that Mihoshi had told Sasami to save for her. 

She plastered a smile on her face as she stepped through the door… and tripped right over Tenchi who was scrubbing the hallway floors, trying to get some of the scorch marks out of it. And, as if the goddess of ill-chance was wreaking havoc with them today, Ryoko phased down from her room just in time to see Washu fall into quite a … compromising position with Tenchi.

Ryoko snarled, "So, at it again are we? Well, maybe I need to make more of a lasting impression this time…" She stretched her hand out, palm-forward and prepared to send an energy blast through the floor where the two "lovers" were scrambling to recompose themselves and get out of the way.

Meanwhile….

In the kitchen Sasami happily cleaned the dishes after cooking a large lunch for everyone to enjoy. She was humming a sweet little tune that she had learned from Misaki while she was a toddler on Jurai. She was just putting the last bowl in the cabinet when Ryo-Ohki ran in like a pack of wolves was after her.

  
"MEEOOOWWW!!!! ROWWWRRR!!!" Her eyes were huge as saucers (and just as white) and she was obviously terrified.

"Ryo-Ohki? What's wrong?" Sasami asked worriedly. Ryo-Ohki just "meowed" spastically and dashed back into the living room. "Oh dear," Sasami commented. "I had better go and see what the matter…is" She threw the dish towel in the sink and ran off into the next room and saw…

Ryoko stretched out her hand and mentally prepared to kill this little bitch who had wormed her way up the ladder of Tenchi's affections. _I will NOT tolerate someone else having him… I will destroy any who get in my way… A dark shadow descended over her mind and she was thrown into a state that she hadn't been in for five thousand years. She was summoning up her energy for one massive blast when a small voice cut through her black haze. _

"STOP IT! RYOKO! JUST STOP IT!" A teary-eyed Sasami screamed. Ryoko turned around slowly to look at the little girl. "Ryoko! Don't hurt people! It's not right!" Ryoko stared in shock at the little girl whose large red eyes stared soulfully into hers.

"She looks like… that girl…" whispered Ryoko to herself. _That girl…the one who… all of Ryoko's thoughts stopped as she relived a moment of her past. A moment that tormented her in her nightmares. Her arm slowly dropped down to her side, as she fused from reality into the world of dreams._

"Ryoko! Hello! Ryoko?" She snapped back to the present as she heard a voice call her name, and she looked down at Washu and realized exactly what she had been fixing to do. She looked again at Sasami, and then looked down to the ground. "I'm…. I'm sorry." She whispered brokenly, loud enough for just the three to hear. Tenchi walked up the Pirate and opened his mouth to ask her what was wrong, when she suddenly blinked out of sight.

"Well, that was certainly odd!" Said Washu in her token cheery voice. That was all that was needed to snap the other two back into the present. Tenchi looked softly at the spot where Ryoko had been hovering, then went out to the shrine for some practicing. Sasami stood for a moment, and then finally made a little jump and skipped back into the kitchen humming. 

Washu sighed to herself, and wondered what exactly her daughter had seen in Sasami. As she bent down to pick up something she had dropped when she tripped, she noticed a small splatter of tears under where Ryoko had been hovering. She solemnly ran a finger over the damp wood, feeling Ryoko's sadness and despair. She straightened up with a grim face, and once again wondered what was wrong with her daughter.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Ryoko sat on the roof, tears spilling from her eyes and slightly blurring her vision as she watched the stars overhead wink at her. She hugged her knees to her chest and talked out loud to comfort herself. "She looked just like, that girl, the one who begged me to stop. Not for her life, but for her parents, and her friends, and even her kitty-cat. She was the only one who asked me to think of someone other than themselves." She remembered that scene to this day, and probably would until she died. All of it was clear as crystal, lying dormant in her subconscious mind, only to resurrect when she slept. The guilt, the horrible, consuming guilt of having all of those lives and all of that collective blood stain her hands. She began telling her tale, as if she asked some person for understanding, although no one was there.

"It was a spring afternoon. I remember I was descending onto some innocent planet for a raid. I hadn't done one personally in a while, and… **he didn't want my image to fade, so ****he was having me destroy some towns myself. I… I had just finished devastating one house, on the edge of a glade, when a small girl came out and looked up at me and, she begged for me to stop, just like Sasami did. She had light indigo hair that reached to her waist, and violet eyes." Ryoko shuddered. "Those eyes… they bored into me, they brought awareness into my controlled fury. They touched my soul." Ryoko stopped her narrative for a moment while the sobs racked her slender body. "S-she asked me why I was doing this. I told her because I had to, and that she was next. She looked up at me with great sadness and, she agreed that if I had to kill her, it was okay, as long as I didn't kill her mommy or daddy, or her best friend Janice, or her kitten Sparks. I-I-I…" Ryoko couldn't finish her sentence as she started weeping into her hands. Her all-consuming grief tore at her, gutting her from the inside. Ryoko curled up into a ball and sat there, shivering and crying, trying to ease the pain of what she had done.**

Washu paced her lab, restless, trying to find a solution, heck even the problem to her daughter's 'relapses'. And the unbearable grief over the mindlink wasn't helping any. Finally she just couldn't take it anymore and temporarily severed the mindlink, and went outside of her lab to distract herself. 

She opened the door cautiously, and peeked around before she stepped out. As fun as the afternoon's events were, she didn't want to repeat them. She stepped out in the hall and then considered retreating back into her sanctuary when she heard Ayeka's high voice whining about Ryoko lazing about and not even helping with the dinner dishes, and how she bet that that 'Awful Space Pirate' was out getting drunk as usual. Washu gritted her teeth at the princess and wondered if she had ever experienced the grief that came from destroying a whole planet. 

"Now Ayeka, that isn't very nice to say!" Washu heard Sasami scold. Washu chuckled and stepped into the kitchen adding, 

"No, it's not, especially when her mother is in the room." Washu grinned internally as she saw the princess flounder and be embarrassed at being caught saying rude and unprincessly types of things. "But that's okay Ayeka" Washu winked. "I forgive you, I know how trying my dear daughter can be at times." 

"'At times?' How about all the time?" Washu pretended not to hear the comment that Ayeka snorted under her breath. "Well, that's the last of the dishes Sasami, I'm going to go watch some TV now."

"Okay sister! I'll finish cleaning up here!" Sasami waved cheerily as Ayeka glided out of the room. "Now, what do you want Washu?" Sasami looked at her with a merry question in her eyes. 

"Oh, don't mind me, I'm sure you're already busy. I'll just help myself to the leftovers in the fridge."

Sasami giggled. "Oh don't be silly! I'll cook something up for you quick as a wink!" She started pulling out pans and pots and asked Washu to bring a few things from the refridgerator. "There's nothing better for dinner than having a warm, fresh meal, and you haven't had one in a while, since you're always in your lab." Sasami quipped with a slightly scolding tone. 

"Yes Sasami-sama. I promise that I will be on time for dinner tomorrow." Washu recited with a school-girl tone.

Sasami laughed cheerfully and winked at Washu. "I'll hold you to that, thanks." She laughed again then began meticulously chopping vegetables, although you really couldn't tell that she was being precise about it, because she was going at about the speed of a salad shooter. She smiled when she saw Washu sneak up beside her to steal some tidbits from the cutting board. Sasami ignored the little hand that kept zipping from the board and back, after all, a few cucumber slices weren't going to matter much. She started humming the tune from this afternoon, the one that her mother had taught her when Washu stopped mid-snatch.

Washu's hand hovered precariously over the cutting board while she watched Sasami with a gaping mouth. Sasami peered quizzically at the genius and politely asked what was wrong. Washu stammered out "T-t-that song… the one you were humming… where did you hear that?"

Sasami shrugged. "I don't know, it's just a nursery song that my mom always used to sing to me, I don't even remember the words anymore."

Washu nodded, "okay, well, thank you for the though Sasami, but apparently I'm going to have to have a cold meal anyways, I have to go call Jurai…" Washu ran out of the room before she could hear Sasami reply,

"Oh! It's no biggie, when I'm finished I'll just let Mihoshi deliver it to you!"


End file.
